Marion, You're Being Missed

Marion Grasby, my favorite person in Masterchef Australia Season 2, was eliminated from the competition earlier this week (well, the elimination really happened in July as that's when the series was being filmed but it's being telecast in India now).



Marion was tipped to win the competition by one & all. Even the contestants were convinced that she would win. She constantly kept winning team & individual challenges and invention tests. Everyone would want her on their team during the team challenges. She was also the only contestant to beat a professional chef in the Celebrity Chef challenge to win immunity, which she used to get herself out of another elimination challenge earlier in the show. That's how good she was!

Marion reacts after beating Chef Frank Camorra of 'Movida' restaurant

And then the unthinkable happened. The most bizarre elimination. I say bizarre because she got eliminated on the back of a Satay sauce. Marion is half Thai & half Australian, has a trained Thai chef for a mother, and has grown up cooking Thai food. So everyone expected her to come up with a brilliant Satay sauce. I guess she was having a bad day.

If what one reads on the net is to be believed, she's on her way to becoming a millionnaire! She's working on her range of Asian products & sauces and is apparently being chased by culinary houses to release her line with them, has landed a series of cookbook publishing deals, is being invited to various food events & product launches, and she's also rumored to be the face of Coles, an Australian supermarket chain!!

That's a lot of money for a girl who gave up a career in journalism to follow her dreams (how I wish more of us had the courage to do that!), and who admits she always wanted to start a food & wine bar along with her partner Tim, but didn't have the means to do so. And you know what, she deserves every cent of that money.

I hope her product range does really well and becomes available in India as well (I'm so buying!), and I also hope she gets to open her restaurant real soon.

Marion was a flavor cook. The dishes she produced had bursts of flavor, to the extent that the judges would complement her by saying "when you eat a dish made by Marion, you know it's by her". That I think is a huge compliment for a chef!

The sad part is that while such an exceptional cook as Marion is out of the competition, ordinary cooks such as Jimmy and Aaron remain. Jimmy can't cook anything except Indian and Aaron's good only with pasta. So it's very surprising that the judges would prefer to retain such average cooks and let go of a brilliant cook as Marion. Masterchef is just not the same without her. I miss watching her at work, I miss her dishes, her enthusiasm, her excitement, and her smile that goes right upto her eyes.

License to Cook?

Since we are in a food zone, let me draw your attention to this article (courtesy The Knife).

Olive Bar & Kitchen in Bandra was never one of my favorite places to eat out in Mumbai inspite of it being the place to be seen at or its proximity to my house. I much preferred its neighbor, Out of the Blue, with its laid-back ambience, mouth-watering pastas, baked cheesecakes and live music on Sunday afternoons.

I've been watching a number of food based shows of late, and I've developed a strong admiration for Western chefs. Their cooking techniques are so evolved, their knowledge of flavors that will and won't work together so strong, and they can conjure up dishes that Indian chefs would probably not even have heard of!

But that's because developed countries have a much more evolved food scene as compared to India. Chefs are valued, celebrated even. There are proper culinary schools to train them in the techniques as well as the art of cooking, followed by an internship under a professional chef.



Reading this article kind of shocked me and was also painful at some level because it confirms what I suspected about Indian restaurants but hoped would be untrue - that the cooks working in restaurant kitchens in India are untrained. In fact, they can't be called chefs at all.

This article talks about how these cooks do not undergo any formal training in cooking. They are barely taught about food. Their training consists merely of showing them pictures of various dishes and leaving them to learn on their own, often by watching the head chef at work.

The proof of such shoddy training lies in the gruel that we are served at most restaurants in India, including fine-dining ones. Oily, over-spiced Indian food, Chinese dishes that are dunked in sauces, pastas floating in cheese. Any Western chef worth his salt will scrunch up his nose at such monstrosities, forget serving them to his customers.

The background of Indian chefs is equally to blame for the quality of food they dish out. Spices dominate the food cooked in Indian homes and vegetables are cooked till they become almost gloopy. The oven is the most under-utilized gadget in Indian kitchens. This is how the cooks grow up watching their mothers/grandmothers cook, and since no one bothers to train them otherwise, this becomes their general notion of food.

Watch a Western chef at his job and you'll learn to appreciate the beauty of food. They let the ingredients do the talking. Spices and seasoning are used just for flavor. And texture, which they get from using different kinds of side ingredients apart from the core one, is as important as flavor. They cook the vegetables only upto a point that it's tender enough to eat so it retains most of its flavor. Poaching, oven-roasting and grilling are also widely used techniques to cook meat to enhance its flavor. Not everything is fried or cooked directly on the flame.


My other pet peeve at restaurants is being served food that's made with ready-to-use sauces & marinades available in the market. I would like a chef to make his sauces & marinades from scratch because a) all the ingredients that go into Italian/Asian/Mexican sauces are available in India now, and b) if I wanted to eat something made with ready-to-use sauces, I could have cooked it at home! People don't pay for shortcuts at restaurants.

But then, it is our inherent tendency as a people to take short-cuts and dupe customers. An Indian businessman will try to cheat his customers to make a quick buck whenever he can find an opportunity. Restaurants are no exception.

Maybe I need to stop watching food-based shows? They're going to ruin my eating out experiences for life! I will never find any restaurant good enough :(



Photographs Courtesy: http://www.masterchef.com.au/

Masterchef India : The Verdict

Masterchef is a one of its kind cookery-based reality show where amateur cooks who have no food industry experience but a passion for cooking, fight for the title of ‘the best cook of the country’, a.k.a. Masterchef. The show has been running super successfully in the U.K. and Australia and has now started airing in India.

The format has been adapted to the Indian market which means that the show is going to have liberal doses of emotions and melodrama. Because, you know, India is a land of excessively emotional people who need melodrama in everything. Drama constitutes a large part of our daily diet. Or so the channel airing the show and the show's producers would like us to believe. So, if you're expecting Masterchef India to be anything like Masterchef Australia, which is currently being aired on Star World, you're in for a major disappointment. As I was :(

For one, India is the only country in the world where Masterchef is hosted by a Bollywood actor. Now, by no means is AK a food connoissuer. He may have worked briefly as a chef in Thailand (that too was decades ago, mind you) but he would not have the kind of culinary expertise that continuing professional chefs would have. The two chefs on the show - Ajay Chopra of Goa Marriott & Kunal Kapoor of Leela Gurgaon - are merely there to save face, so the show can "legally" claim to have stuck to the Masterchef format if ever taken to court by the owners of the format. The chefs are completely sidelined - most of the challenges are thrown and judged by AK. In fact, in one of the episodes AK was even described as "the most talented chef in India". What a joke!

There is a lot of emotion, drama and religion on the show because, you know, this is India. Participants on MC Australia rarely shed tears except when they've been eliminated. The judges don't kiss or hug them either when they make something delicious. Neither do they run to the pantry with contestants.

While the judges of MC Australia criticize each dish specifically mentioning it's flaws/strengths, all AK does is mouth cheesy lines such as 'meri kamiyabi ki buniyad cooking hai' (really now?), 'khana nahi, jeena aur marna ban jayega', 'jung maidan mein ho ya kitchen mein, chahiye himmat', 'aapke husband show dekh rahe honge, aap unse kuch kehna chahengi?' Puke.

Then there is the compulsory dose of religion that must feature in every Indian reality show. A lot of “wahe guru” happened on the first weekend, and one aspirant put a napkin over her head and prayed when she arrived before the jury. Tons of punjabi bonding happens as well. Aunties say things like 'yeh apron meri izzat hai'. More gag.

The participants on MC India 'ooh' and 'aah' every time AK appears, as if he and not cooking is the reason they are there. Thank God AK sticks to the script, rather than obliging fawning star-struck fans.

Finally, given the quality and background of contestants on the show, I seriously doubt we'll be seeing any world/international cuisine being cooked. Unlike in MC Australia where invention tests often revolve around Japanese, Indian, Spanish, American, British, Mexican, Asian or French cuisine, I have a feeling MC India will revolve around Indian cuisine only.

Clearly, the makers of Masterchef India are confused as to which direction they want to steer the show in. Or are they? Read this quote by Anupam Vasudev, executive vice-president, STAR Plus, "MasterChef India is not a cookery show. It is a competitive game show with cookery happening in the background." (Source: http://www.afaqs.com/)

That says it all about MC India. It kind of seals the fate of the show, at least as far as I am concerned.

As far as I know, Masterchef Australia never claims to be anything but a cookery show, and it definitely doesn't attempt to put cooking in the background. Cooking and chefs are the mainstay as well as the backbone of the show. Kind of goes to prove how Indian channel heads misuse the right to "adapt" a show to the Indian context.

Food Fiesta

I'm addicted to cookery shows, which is ironic because I dislike cooking. I'm more accepting of the idea now than I was a couple of years ago - at times I even feel like cooking. But that's generally on weekends and I'm usually tired after making one dish. I could never whip up a meal!

So this fascination with cookery shows is strange. Why then do I like to watch them?

Well, I think there's something about food that comforts you and makes you happy. It's a combination of the various colors and textures coming together. The pink of the meat...the red, green, yellow of the peppers...the white of the garlic...the green of the chillies...the red of tomatoes...the translucence of onions. And then all these colors and textures come together in what you can imagine to be a heady concoction of subtle tastes and heavenly aromas. That is when professionals chefs or domestic goddesses are cooking. I am neither. So I just sit & watch.

Here's a list of my favorite cookery shows on TV:

1. Nigella Bites / Nigella Express / Forever Summer With Nigella - The first to be mentioned has got to be Nigella. Like there were two ways about it!

Nigella has three shows on Travel & Living - Nigella Bites where she cooks lunch, dinner, desserts...the whole hog, Nigella Express where she generally makes quick-bites that are even quicker to prepare, and Forever Summer With Nigella where she prepares light dishes that would be ideal for the summer.

Nigella's shows are visually very appealing, and no, I'm not referring to her assets. Enough and more men drool over her assets. As Rahul Khanna's famous tweet goes, "Nigella Lawson's cooking show is mouthwatering. And the food looks delicious too."

I'm referring to her pretty kitchen, the soft lighting, the crockery/utensils she uses, the colorful vegetables splayed on her cooking table, including the gorgeous huge bright yellow lemons, her impeccable make-up....everything. All very aesthetic and very easy on the eye.

The other reason I like her show so much is that she doesn't skimp on the fat or carbs while cooking! She'll use a generous amount of oil, won't separate the fat from the meat, won't skimp on the butter or the bread. And she eats what she prepares. It's very comforting to watch her dig into a huge slice of cheesecake or chocolate pavlova slathered with whipped cream or a bowl of chocolate pudding, in the middle of the night, without feeling guilty about it.

2. Top Chef - Top Chef is an American reality show in which chefs compete against each other in culinary challenges. They are judged by a panel of professional chefs and other accomplished people from the food industry and one contestant gets eliminated every week.

Top Chef is all about gourmet dining. The dishes - even the soups - are almost always exotic because there are professional chefs competing against each other and each chef would like to outdo the other. I envy the judges who get to sample all the dishes, but yes, one needs to be a seafood lover to be a judge on this show because some of the most exotic dishes are seafood based.

3. Masterchef Australia - I'm absolutely completely hooked on to Masterchef Australia! It's an Australian reality show - obviously - but unlike Top Chef, this show has amateurs competing to become Australia's Masterchef.

Some of the challenges include a face-off against some of Australia's biggest celebrity chefs. Masterchef Australia is a cookery show but it's no less gripping than a thriller. These three men are scary, believe me!

You also tend to get more emotionally involved with this show as compared to say, Top Chef, because the contestants are regular people with day jobs but with a passion for food. Many of them even want to give up their present jobs for a career in the food industry, so the show is kind of a means for them to make their dream come true.

4. Rachel Allen : Bake! - I once tried to convince The Knife to start watching Rachel Allen : Bake! She's got the goods, you know...pretty face, soft blond curls, blue (or is it green?) eyes. But he's a Nigella loyalist.

Anyway, Rachel Allen is an Irish baker. Dessert Goddess, rather. If you like baking this show is right up your alley. The focus is on desserts, but she also bakes breads, pizzas and other savouries. Her recipes are usually simple and not very labour-intensive. She even holds classes for people interested in baking, on the show, so you can jot the recipes down as she instructs the class. She also meets other bakers across the UK and gets recipes from them.

5. Tony Bourdain - Enough said.

Which are your favorite cookery shows?

My Mini-Vacation is Over :(

Pizza slices and lamb stew at Pali Village Cafe...

Baked Philly cheesecake, chocolate "sin" cake and white chocolate latte at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf...

Bacon, ham, salami pizza and cheesy pasta with chicken & mushrooms at Pizzaria...

Baked Philly cheesecake and mango cheesecake from Moshe's...

Soba noodles with bacon & orange zest in a creamy sauce, pan seared chicken with porcini, caramelized onion sauce & roasted potatoes and Baked Philly cheesecake at Salt Water Cafe...

A box of yummilicious chocolate eclairs and brownie cheesecakes from Sante brought by a wonderful friend...

Two foodies, dessert lovers, shopaholics and BFF enjoying a weekend off together...

The Knife trying his best to make a disgusted face...

And my chubby face and chubby arms having made it to a celebrity food blogger's blog (isn't that just delightful!)

I had the most fun mini-vacation! More on it coming up soon...

What you did over the weekend?

Bhindis

They're a vegetable I hate. Along with kaddu...lauki...gourd whatever you call it in your part of the world. I mean, are they even edible thingamingas?

As for bhindis (okra), I don't like the way they feel. Slimy to touch. And so I dutifully stayed away from them for quite some time. Unless I got these Gujarati neighbors!

Now, Gujaratis as you know love their vegetables. My neighbor, who is this darling woman of 22 who's just got married and moved to Calcutta from Ahmedabad, and who brings me dhoklas, theplas, sev ka shaak, Gujarati kadhi and very amusing desserts from time to time, introduced me to this masalewali bhindi. Bhindis sliced open along their length and stuffed with a concoction of spices - crushed garlic, red chilli powder, coriander powder, cumin powder, turmeric, salt, sugar & a teaspoon of oil to bind the spices - and cooked in some oil on low flame till they are done. If you like spicy food, you will love this dish.

So I'm friends with bhindi again. What to do, I had no choice. I demanded a care package which never arrived. Instead I got a very gruff, "I'm going to take you back to your father. I've been given damaged goods. I want a fresh piece...or my money back".

Well, so much for having expected a care package. Not even one-hundredth of what I made for The Boy when he was sick, I got. So I set out for Flury's feeling sick and grumpy while a craving for chocolates & pastries swelled up inside of me like a surging tide, and bought a boxful of chocolate pastries & a walnut cake. Which are now sitting pretty inside my fridge b/c I'm back to craving the spicy bhindis.

Well, at least the bhindi & I are friends again. And I won't expect them to make me a care package, so there's no potential for disappointment either. It is all about expectation management, you know. And choosing your target well.

P.S.: Totally unrelated to bhindis, but I quite like how Deepika Padukone looks & struts her stuff in the Sony Supermodel Cyber-shot Camera ad. I like her hair (extensions, of course), her make-up, her dress & the way she walks down the ramp. Now only if she wasn't so much of a turn-off as soon as she opened her mouth.

Mom's Mutton Curry

The Boy has finally accepted that my mom may just be a better cook than his (of course, he’s certain she is but loyalty to his mater prevents him from admitting as much).

The recipe in question was my mom’s Mutton Curry recipe (the famous 1kg onion : 1kg mutton recipe), and if a non-cook like me can whip up the dish that compels The Boy to make such a statement, you can imagine the power of the recipe.

So here, ladies & gentlemen, is my mother’s Mutton Curry recipe. Great with rice, pulao, puris and just about anything.

The star cast:

Mutton – 750gm
Onions, grated – 750 gm (that’s a hell lot of onions I know, but hang in there, soldier :)
Ginger paste – 2 tbsp
Garlic paste – 2 tbsp
Tomatoes, grated – 2 large
Yogurt (for marinating)
Bay leaves – 2-3
Salt to taste
Turmeric
Chilli Powder – 1 tsp
Coriander Powder – 2 tsp
Mustard oil (!!!)
Ghee – 2 tsp
Garam masala powder – ½ tsp

My mom makes this mutton curry in mustard oil. I don’t like mustard oil and never use it myself but she insists it gives the dish a robust flavor and it wouldn’t turn out even half as good with refined cooking oil. Hey, who am I to argue?

The script (the drama unfolds):

Marinate the mutton in mustard oil, yogurt, salt & turmeric for half an hour.

Heat mustard oil in a pan. Add the bay leaves once the oil is hot & let them splutter. Add the onions and fry till they are light brown in color. Add the ginger and garlic pastes. Fry till the mixture is a nice shade of brown. Add tomatoes and fry for another 2-3 minutes.

Add the mutton, salt & turmeric. Stir in the mutton well with the spices, cover the lid and let cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally.

The mutton will ooze water which will start resembling a semi-thick gravy. When the gravy has dried up and the mutton has started oozing oil (mutton fat), remove the lid. Add chilli powder & coriander powder and fry on medium-high heat till the mutton turns brown.

Remember not to take the lid off and start frying before the water has dried up and the mutton starts oozing oil. This will cause the gravy to splutter and the mutton & spices will stick to the bottom and char due to lack of oil.

Transfer the contents into a pressure cooker, add a glass (250ml) of hot water and seal the cooker. Let it whistle once on high heat and 2-3 times on low heat.

For some reason, my mom always adds warm/hot water while she's cooking rather than water at room temperature. It's a little bit of a pain but if you have a micro, life's good :)

Let the cooker stay shut till all the vapor has been released, open, add ghee & garam masala powder. Stir well & serve.

My mom also always adds the garam masala powder right before taking the dish off the stove. I don't know why though, never asked.

This curry will take about 2 hours on the gas. You need to have patience to cook it. Many people cook the mutton in the pressure cooker before adding it to the pot in which they are cooking the spices but that will give you a very average kind of curry. Cooking the mutton with the spices first for more than an hour (that's how much time it will take) will get the spices to really infuse into the meat.

I wish I had pictures but what to do...I'm lazy and a little squeamish about clicking pictures of everything I cook :P

Black Forest, Sausages, Sauerkraut, Pretzels: All Things German

Did you know that the Black Forest cake is named after the Black Forest region in Southwest Germany? And the original Black Forest Cake, or Black Forest Gateau as the Europeans call it, is LOADED with whipped cream (Gateaux are very light sponge cakes with a rich icing/ filling).

The Black Forest Gateau consists of two or three thin layers of cake sandwiched between thick layers of fresh whipped cream, covered on the top & all around with whipped cream and decorated with whipped cream, maraschino cherries & chocolate shavings. It also consists of Schwarzwald Kirschwasser, a cherry liquor from the Black Forest, or Schwarzwald region of Germany.

The baked cake is stored for 24 hours before it is dressed with the whipped cream & cherries. From the outside, you’re only supposed to be able to see the whipped cream and not the chocolate cake.

The original Black Forest cake is supposed to look like this:

(Photo courtesy: http://www.andreasrecipe.com/)

Or this:

(Photo courtesy: http://www.kitchenmishmash.com/)

Contrast these with the poor excuse for Black Forest cakes that's served in India.

Did you know that an average German eats approximately 67 lbs (approx. 30 kgs) of sausages in a year? The sausages are accompanied by sauerkraut (got the spelling right without help from the dictionary!) which is made from cabbages & onions. The cabbages are thinly sliced, pounded, sprinkled with generous amounts of salt & let to stew in the salt for 6-8 weeks!! The salt drains the water from the cabbages and they are then cooked with onions.

Did you know that pretzels are German too? Legend has it that a monk, in 610 AD (beginning of the Middle Ages) was trying to use leftover bread dough. He twisted the dough in the shape of arms in prayer (Christians in those days prayed with their arms across their chest, apparently) to reward children who had learnt their religious lessons well. He named them “pretiola” in Latin, which means "little rewards". The three empty holes were meant to help children grasp the concept of the Holy Trinity.

(Photo courtesy: http://michaelprocopio.wordpress.com/)

Pretiolas spread throughout Europe over the centuries and became really popular, particularly in German-speaking countries where they came to be known as “pretzels”.

Almost all food in the world has such interesting origins, most often than not drawing from the local culture and tradition of the place it originates from. Some of the stories around their origin are too old to be traced or verified but they are amazingly interesting stories nonetheless. The world of food is a fascinating one.

Yes, I’ve been watching a lot of Travel & Living lately. :)

Italian Lovin'

I got home late from work last night, with a major craving for continental food. I was totally not feeling the mixed vegetable & tomato soup that was supposed to be my dinner (I’m in one of those no-carbs-at-night phase) and was looking at me from the fridge with “poor-me” eyes, begging to be loved. I decided it could wait. Luckily, I had boneless chicken, mushrooms, fresh cream & tomato puree at home. Besides, I had promised A I would cook for him. So I decided to make Chicken in Mushroom Sauce with Pasta & Garlic Bread on the side for dinner for me & my boy.

Now, I’m not a great cook. Just about average. I started taking an interest in cooking just a few months ago, and I cook only about once a week or so. I definitely don’t find it therapeutic as many people do (I do find doing dishes therapeutic though). I also don’t cook the regular chawal-dal fare. I cook when I feel like eating something different - say Italian, Thai, Mexican etc. - but I don’t want to eat out. Or when I feel like cooking for A, who is an absolute gift from heaven! He serves the food, insists on cleaning up after dinner and likes whatever I cook. Yes, he’s that kind of guy :)

So, on demand, here are the recipes for Chicken in Mushroom Sauce, Pasta Arabbiata & Homemade Garlic Bread that I made for dinner last night.

Chicken in Mushroom Sauce (Serves 2)

Boneless Chicken Breasts, whole, without skin - 2-3
Mushrooms, finely sliced - 100gm
Onion, finely sliced - 1 medium (or 2 small)
Garlic, finely chopped - 2-3 cloves
Milk - 200ml
Fresh Cream - 4-5 tbsp
Dried Thyme - ½ tsp
Salt & Pepper
Olive oil

Heat oil in a pan. Sprinkle a pinch of salt (not much) & some pepper on the chicken and cook till done, turning sides.

For the mushroom sauce, heat oil in another pan. Add the sliced onions once the oil is hot and cook till they are soft & translucent. Add the garlic and the mushrooms and cook till mushrooms are dark & soft. Add the milk and fresh cream. Fresh cream will give the sauce the consistency it needs for this dish. Add salt, pepper, dried thyme & bring to a boil. Cook on low-medium heat till the sauce thickens. Pour the sauce on top of the chicken & serve.

Tip: You can also add a sprinkling of paprika for taste but it’s optional. And don’t add too much thyme - this dish is supposed to get its flavor from the mushrooms, not the herbs.

Pasta Arabbiata

Pasta – desired quantity
Tomato puree (I tried using homemade puree once but the dish didn’t turn out good, so I now stick to packaged puree that you get easily in supermarkets).
Garlic, finely chopped - 3-4 cloves
Parsley (though fresh parsley would give the dish more flavor, ½ tsp of dried parsley works as well)
Salt & pepper
Olive oil - 1 tsp

Boil the pasta, al dente. Drain and set aside.

I prefer cooking the sauce first and then adding pasta to it, rather than adding the sauce to the pasta.

For the sauce, heat olive oil in a pan. Add the chopped garlic and sauté till it’s golden brown. Pour in the tomato puree. Add salt, pepper & parsley and bring the sauce to a boil. Cook for 2-3 mins on low heat. You can then put in the pasta & cook for a few more minutes.

Homemade Garlic Bread

I made this with regular whole-wheat bread. Mix butter, a teaspoon of olive oil & parsley together. Again, fresh parsley, finely chopped, would be better but dried parsley works too. Spread the mixture on the bread slices, wrap in aluminum foil & bake. Servce hot.

Tip: Remember to leave the foil partly open so the bread doesn’t become soggy from the heat getting trapped inside the foil.

Buon appetito!

Homemade Chicken Curry & Steaming Vegetable Soup

Chicken curry has always been my comfort food. Though my favorite cuisines are Chinese followed by Italian, homemade chicken curry is what I crave when I need nurturing. It’s the kind of food I want when I need a hug from mom but mom is in a land far away.

Chicken curry also reminds me of Sundays while I was growing up. Sundays used to be chicken/mutton/fish curry days! My family called itself non-vegetarian but our idea of non-vegetarianism was having chicken/mutton/fish one day of the week. That was the world I grew up in. It wasn’t a money issue; it was the fact that non-vegetarian food was essentially considered unhealthy thanks to the more-than-you-can-count-on-the-fingers-of-your-hands number of doctors in my family!

My mom’s chicken curry used to be lavish. She used to take as much onion as chicken - almost a kg of onion for 1 kg chicken - and she would cook them together till the onions melted and their flavor inflused into the chicken. She used to finish the dish off with a generous helping of ghee. Do I need to mention how divine it tasted?

The chicken curry I make isn’t my mom’s recipe. It’s a recipe I’ve picked up along the way. The best part is that it’s light as it doesn’t need too much oil, so you won't have any ghee stubbornly applying for permanent residency on your hips/butt/tummy. And it’s a happy bright yellow color!

I would like to dedicate this recipe to The Knife. He has inspired a person like me who hated cooking to start experimenting with it. I cook often on weekends now. So it’s only fair I dedicate my favorite recipe to him!

The ingredients for this Chicken Curry are:

Chicken - 800 gms
Olive oil - 4-5 tbsp (you can use regular vegetable oil too)
Cloves - 2-3
Cardamoms (whole) - 2
Cinnamon stick - 1
Bayleaf - 2
Onions, sliced - 100 gms
Ginger garlic paste - 3 tbsp
Salt to taste
Red chilli powder - ½ tsp
Turmeric powder - ¼ tsp
Coriander powder - 1 tsp
Cumin powder - 1 tsp
Garam masala powder - ¼ tsp
Yogurt - 4-5 tbsp
2 large tomatoes, chopped
Green coriander for garnishing

Heat oil in a pan. Add the whole masala and once it starts cracking, add the chopped onions. Fry till the onions are golden brown. Add ginger-garlic paste along with all the powder masala. Sauté for sometime, then add the chicken pieces & salt. Sauté for sometime. Add yogurt & tomato and sauté. Add water and cook till done. Serve with rice or chapattis.

There’s also a vegetable soup that I made yesterday for the first time. Completely original recipe. I won’t tie you down with proportions since I’m not an expert cook. Most of you who know cooking will have a much better idea of proportions, but for people who’re as culinary challenged as me, the quantity of each ingredient I used is as follows (Serves 2):

Peas - 100 gms
1 medium sized carrot, thinly sliced
5-6 florets of cauliflower
1 large tomato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 inch piece of ginger, grated
4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 green chilly, chopped
Salt to taste
A pinch of turmeric
Crushed black pepper
Maggi soup masala cube (This is just to spice up the soup a little bit. You can use any other soup seasoning as well or skip this completely if you’d rather have a blander tasting soup).

Dump the peas, carrots & cauliflower in a pressure cooker & cover with water (enough only to submerge the vegetables). Add a pinch of salt & turmeric powder. Fix the lid & pressure cook till done (they should be done in 3-4 whistles). Dump the contents of the pressure cooker in a blender along with the water you boiled it in. This is because they say that if you boil vegetables, most of their nutrients seep out into the water. This is simply a way of retaining the goodness of vegetables and you won’t need to add additional water into the blender.

(You can alternatively steam the vegetables but in this case you’d need to add some water into the blender while blending the vegetables.)

Add the chopped tomato, onion, ginger, garlic & green chilly into the blender & blend. Caution : do remember to fix the lid of the blender properly or you’ll soon have green colored walls!

Once the vegetables are blended, pour the liquid back into a vessel. Add some more salt (to taste), crushed black pepper (as desired), Maggi soup masala cube and bring to a boil. Simmer for 4-5 mins. Serve hot.

I’m not going to dedicate this recipe to The Knife. I do want to live to write another post, afterall. So…I’ll dedicate it to my mother!
See mommy, I’m eating my vegetables!

There's Always a First Time!

Confession time, people. I was a Mainland China virgin until the past weekend.

For the uninitiated, there’s always been the Indian Chinese served at most Chinese restaurants in India, and the Chinese served at Mainland China. I had never been to the restaurant because numerous people had told me that the Chinese they serve is rather bland, authentic Chinese so to say. And we all know that Indians love Indian Chinese. We have Chinese dishes that even the Chinese aren’t aware of! The most popular example being Chicken Manchurian, I think.

But I got convinced by a colleague to try the lunch buffet at Mainland China, and after the experience I’ve been wondering why I hadn’t been to the restaurant before!

Mainland China has two restaurants in Calcutta - one (the original) at Gurusaday Road & a new one at South City Mall, Calcutta’s newest hip destination. Both restaurants are HUGE. They also have a private dining facility at Silver Arcade on EM Bypass. I went to the one at South City. The ambience is serene, with just the right amount of lighting for a fine dining experience. The décor consists mainly of beige walls & ceiling, and cut-out wood.

And the food? It’s classy stuff. It retains the authenticity of Chinese cuisine, yet is spicy enough to tingle the Indian palate. The buffet spread consisted of a soup, LOVELY dim sums (I was going to make an entire meal of dim sums until I realized I didn't want to end up paying almost 500 bucs for dim sums alone!), chicken wings in Hunan sauce, chicken noodles, ginger fried rice (white with a hint of ginger, not the typical fried rice but very nice), a chicken entrée, one lamb and 3 types of fish (prawns, crabs & regular fish).

I didn’t check what was on offer for vegetarians, so excuse me s'il vous plaît!

My only grouse with the buffet spread was that they had so many fish dishes on offer and only one chicken & one lamb. But then, I live in Calcutta so I should’ve been prepared for the fish onslaught. Just that it seems a little unfair :(

The desserts….were awesome too! Strawberry mousse, Strawberry ice-cream, Vanilla ice-cream with darsaan (an ass-kicking combo), and tiny little white jelly-like cubes (kind of like the petit fours of Candies) that had something to do with almonds & were drizzled with orange sauce!!

I was truly in Chinese food paradise as we stretched our lunch to approximately 2 hours.

For those who might be interested, Mainland China serves lunch from 12.45PM - 3.30 PM & dinner from 7.30PM - 11.30PM. The lunch buffet costs Rs 325 (or Rs 350, I'm not sure) + taxes on weekdays & Rs 425 (or Rs 435) + taxes on weekends (in Calcutta that is. Prices in other cities may vary).

They do serve alcohol & accept credit cards. They have their own website, so you can check out their menu online. Their telephone nos. are 64578361/ 2422 5330/31/32/33 (South City Mall) & 22837964/65/66 / 32511257 (Gurusaday Road).

Mainland China is a classy place and it doesn't end at the food. They have superior service - efficient, prompt, attentive & helpful. That’s very different from most restaurants in Calcutta where one often finds waiters who are clueless about their own dishes, rude & act like they're doing you the biggest favor on earth by serving you!

When you go to Mainland China - or the next time you go to Mainland China - order the darsaan with Vanilla ice-cream for dessert. Vanilla has always been the real McCoy of ice-creams, and the darsaan is sweet & it’ll stick to your teeth and make you feel like a kid again :)

So I've Been Gorging on Plum Cakes

Between Friday & yesterday (Monday), I finished half a kg of plum cake all by myself. “Rich” plum cake to be precise. And promptly went and bought another half kg to tide me over till Christmas!!

Did I mention I’m trying to lose weight?

Oh well, I’m having myself a merry little Christmas right now.

Food Wars

Remember the time when you saw guys at work order in the most delicious-looking keema (or whatever) for lunch? And you with your dabba of sad roti, sabzi & dal found yourself salivating all over? And the next day you ordered the same keema, only it didn’t taste so delicious anymore. It tasted just about OK and was floating in oil (or dalda if you please), so you felt stuffed & bloated until hours later.

Yup, today is that day! So while we’re discussing delicious keema, I want to discuss a food-related attitude that stems essentially from the cultural difference between the East & the West. Well, it stretches to other aspects of life as well but let’s limit our discussion to food here.

You know what cultural difference I’m talking about?

Individualism vs Collectivism. West vs East. Have your keema mostly by yourself vs share it with everyone around & get only a bite to eat yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not selfish. The only food items I’m possessive about are brownies & cheesecakes. I’ll even share my chocolate with you! But if I order something for myself, I like to get to eat the most of it unless I went in with the understanding that I’ll be splitting it with someone.

I get bugged when you’re expected to share everything you're eating with people at work. If you don’t, then you’re snooty, you have an attitude problem ya di ya da. Which, according to me, is just plain stupid. I’m like, “Hello, if I’ve ordered this it means I’m hungry. If you want to eat it too, go get your own!”

There’s this very collective, social mentality in India - we’re all one big happy family etc. As opposed to the West where everyone gets what they want and minds their own business (and their food). They believe in making their lives simple.

Take for example the restaurants…they’ll always ask you if you’d like to split the bill (unless they’re a very high-end, expensive restaurant where etiquette demands you not act fussy about money. And the assumption is that if you're loaded enough to dine there, you can very well foot the entire bill). So each person orders a dish, the restaurant splits the bill & everyone pays for what they ate. Unlike India where people order collectively and when it’s time to pay the bill, there’s unnecessary confusion on how much each one would need to pay, and someone or the other always feels short-changed at the end of it all because they either didn’t get their change back or they paid for more than they ate because you the bill is generally split equally, regardless of what people order. This is not an efficient system. I’m all for individualism. I’m all for eating my own food.

The Story of an Apple Cake

I’ve recently fallen in love with the Blueberry Muffin & the Apple Cake at Barista. They’re soft, moist, have just the right amount of sweetness & best of all, they’re free of the calories of chocolate pastries you get at coffee shops. I’m sure they’re laden with butter but let’s just let them be, shall we?

I’ve been craving a Blueberry Muffin or an Apple Cake almost every day for the past couple of weeks, so I decided to make an apple cake at home yesterday evening. Headed straight to Lake Market after work to pick up apples & ground cinnamon. The rest of the ingredients were at home.

I spent more than an hour mixing the ingredients & beating the batter before popping it in the microwave, yet the apple cake came out dry & harder than a cookie!! I know what mistakes I made but I was heartbroken nonetheless, not to mention that my craving got intensified.

For those who care, here’s the recipe for an apple cake:

Apples – Peeled, cored & chopped
All purpose flour (maida) – 3 cups
Butter or vegetable oil (You can use either but butter will obviously enhance the taste) – 2 cups
Eggs - 3
White sugar – 1 ½ cups
Ground cinnamon – 1 tsp
Baking soda – 1 tsp
Vanilla Essence – 2 tsp
Walnuts – chopped (optional)

Sift all purpose flour, baking soda & ground cinnamon together. Beat the eggs, add sugar till it dissolves. Gradually stir in the flour while beating continuously. Pour in the butter, keep beating. Add baking vanilla essence, apples & walnuts. Pour into a pan (that you can pop into the micro) smeared with butter. Bake!

You will get this...


(Photo courtesy: The Home Executive)

I promise yours will turn out better than mine, just don’t skimp on the butter, or OD on the flour or baking soda!!


P.S.: I used to think Gwyneth Paltrow & Chris Martin were really crazy for having named their daughter 'Apple'. While I still wonder what they were thinking when they named her that, I think 'Apple' is a pretty cute name for a kid. Though I'm not sure I would've felt the same way if I were named that, or she will when she grows up!!

Mocambo

There’s a popular restaurant on Park Street in Calcutta called Mocambo. I use the word “popular” because if you get there for dinner after 8pm on a weekend, you can be rest assured of at least a half an hour waiting time. WHICH given their food is shocking! To me at least. The restaurant serves Indian & Continental cuisine, though it’s more popular for its Continental fare. People say Mocambo's the way to go if you like Continental.

Continental food, my ass!!

I ordered lasagna. Now, we all know that lasagna consists of layers of meat, flat pasta sheets, tomato pasta sauce & cheese. At Mocambo, they believe in flavoring the meat in their lasagna with Indian spices & garnishing the dish with chopped raw tomatoes!! Absolutely horrifying!!! That’s a Calcuttan’s idea of a lasagna??

My cousin ordered a spaghetti carbonara that had no flavor whatsoever. My uncle, who was treating us, turned out to be the most sensible of us all & went with Indian food. Not much chance for a restaurant to go wrong with that. Thank God they didn’t, or I would’ve really doubted their right to even exist in the food business at all.

Mocambo is not cheap. Each continental dish costs around 200 bucs & the portions are rather small. It’s also one of the restaurants that makes me question the taste of the people of Calcutta when it comes to non-Indian, non-Chinese food. They really don’t know other cuisines at all – something that’s validated by the fact that a restaurant that serves such monstrosity is so popular. Even other Continental restaurants such as Taaja’s on Ballygunge Circular Road & One Step Up on Park Street don’t fare much better. Marco Polo on Lansdowne Road is a better bet for Continental food any day.

More Validation for Women Who Luuuuurrrve Dark Chocolate

According to a research carried out at the European Dermatology Clinic at Harley Street (whichever Alpine corner of Europe that is in), eating dark chocolates every day can reduce the risk of skin cancer & help the skin tolerate wrinkle-causing UV rays better, as it is high in flavanols, the antioxidants that occur naturally in cocoa beans.

Which means that dark chocolate is anti-ageing! Hurray!!

Now you know why women are so obsessed with dark chocolate!!

Butter on Toast

With sugar sprinkled on top. Had while soaking in the winter sun. Pure bliss.

Do Not Try This At Home

I’m talking about making Tandoori Chicken on a gas stove. Which moron tries to do that, you ask?

Well, you get three guesses & the first two don’t count!

Why did I do that? Because a) I don’t have a tandoor oven or a gas tandoor at home but I really wanted to make tandoori chicken, and b) A friend of mine made it on the gas stove once & it came out looking just like it looks at restaurants.

You want to know how mine looked? It looked like a chicken dish without the curry!

To be fair to myself though - and to my dearest gas burner - it didn’t taste bad at all. It tasted quite good actually, thanks to my superior marination skills. I beat some yogurt, added generous amounts of ginger-garlic paste, lots of tandoori chicken masala (in the hope that the damn chicken would come out looking red as it does in restaurants, but it came out as pinkish-orange at best) & kept it in the fridge for 24 hrs. It tasted awesome…just that it didn’t look like tandoori chicken at all!

I must get hold of my friend & torture her until she spills the secret as to how she made hers look just like professionally made tandoori chicken.

On an aside, I’ve been going for a jog/walk since Monday. Have made it 3 days in a row! Let’s hope it continues.

There is a huge lake about 100 meters from my house that I’d never seen the face of in the one & a half years I’ve been living here. On Monday I decided to go. It was a momentour occasion in the history of mankind, I tell you, because I’ve been planning to go for a jog around the lake for about a year now. There is a nice jogging track and tons of people walking, jogging & doing yoga & all kinds of weird exercises. There are companies peddling health food/drinks at the entrance, and food stalls. The grossly obese uncles & aunties who come for their “morning walk” – because their arteries are choked with cholesterol & the weighing scale threatens to shatter under their weight – put a nice end to their walk by gulping down kachories deep fried in oil & jalebis that are saturated with sugar syrup. I wonder why they bother to get up in the morning & come for a walk at all, because trust me, it’s a BIG pain to do so!

It takes all the motivation that I can gather to wake up at 7am (I set my alarm for 6.30 & hit snooze at least 3 times before I get up) with the prospect of having to torture myself physically. No one likes to exercise, accept it. The motivation for me is that I need to lose 6 more kgs (yes people, I have lost 6 kgs already!!) , and the bonus is that I get to watch rowers glide through the lake in their boats & lech at their toned, muscular, dark glistening bodies jog by my side after their rowing sessions. You see, the lake is home to the Calcutta Rowing Club.

Sunday Lunch

Spaghetti Carbonara – cheesy, subtly flavored & with crispy bits of ham - followed by coffee and blueberry muffin, and rounded off with Belgian chocolate ice-cream. Now, that's a Sunday lunch worth having!!

How was your Diwali?

So We’ve Been Good This Weekend!!

Shopping (for clothes, shoes & bags though not necessarily in that order) & desserts are two of my biggest weaknesses, and I was good on both counts.

After unexplained and totally unnecessary crying over the complete absence of shopping in my life, I went to my favorite store (in India at least) - Cotton World - over the weekend. I hadn’t been there in AGES, so I was ravenous for clothes! Raided the entire store and ended up trying some 20 outfits (!!) out of which I short-listed 9. But obviously I couldn’t walk out of the store with all 9 items in tow, or it would’ve put all those months of abstinence to waste.

So I went on another round of trials, after which I sadly and with a leaden heart let go of four. It was a very tough decision folks, to let go of a sexy top, uber-cute pajamas (baby pink with white polka dots) & the cutest sleeping shorts (with pink & purple hearts on them et al). Sob sob :((

I was depressed. To put myself in a happier place again, I decided I wanted cheesecake. I headed to a patisserie....but....just then....alarms bells went off in my head! (Remember, we haven’t lost the entire 10kgs yet?)

Gaaaaah....goddamn alarm bells! They always go off at the wrong time!!

So there I was standing in front of the patisserie with the sad face of a baby that wants chocolate but doesn’t get it, while there was a huge war waging inside my head....like the war between the id & the superego! 'Id' wanted that cheesecake, which I could so clearly see calling out to me from inside the patisserie (they have voices, trust me!), but the superego was yelling “Leave! You’re fat! You don’t need that cheesecake!”

And I walked away.

Sigh…depravity! How difficult can life get? But the same evening, my sister came over with a box of freshly baked, warm & gooey chocolate chip and walnut cookies from Cookie Man.

There’s always justice in the universe, you know? What's yours shall be yours forever. No one can take it away from you :P